


The Gemini Project

by Lil_Lupin, Valaks



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alex and Julius POV switch, Alex is also still his lovely self as well, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassin!Julius, Canon compliant-ish, Gen, I think she’s a serious kill joy, Julius is still his lovely self, Just Clone-ing Around, Lupin said that was the only pun I could make because this is a serious fic, Nightmare Fuel, Really...kills his ability to sleep, Starting in Point Blanc, Yassen Gregorovich never wanted to see another Rider, let alone two, spy!Alex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29945613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Lupin/pseuds/Lil_Lupin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valaks/pseuds/Valaks
Summary: When news of a Rider clone reached him, Alan Blunt had a choice to make. In one world, the flames of Brooklands school consumed Julius Grief and what was left of his sanity. In another, fate intervened and Alan Blunt saw a chance and took it. An unwilling spy and an unbalanced assassin. Both effective. Both useful in their own way. And both named Alex Rider.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	The Gemini Project

Alex Rider was going to die.

That much was certain. Julius just had to find him again.

A door slammed from somewhere above and he spun toward the stairs, taking them two at a time, simultaneously fumbling to reload the gun he’d emptied in the Chemistry lab downstairs. A second later he was through the door into another classroom. 

Empty. He halted, gun raised, coughing. Smoke from the fire below had filled the room; the air was hazy. But ahead he heard a clang against metal. Through smarting eyes he spotted a spiral staircase and lunged for it. 

It was desperately tempting to fire upwards towards the sound of pounding feet. But he only had one more clip and he couldn’t risk it; especially if it meant he couldn’t see Rider’s face as the bullet entered his forehead.

He tore up the steps. Above him he heard a thud - another door. He sped up, determined to get through before Rider could bar it and trap him in with the fire. 

Smoke curled out around him as he stumbled into fresh air, sucking in a few grateful lungfuls as he scanned the seemingly empty rooftop. 

Rider was hiding. _Coward_. 

“ _Where are you?”_ Julius snarled. 

A sudden noise behind him. He spun, firing instinctively - but a second later a body slammed into him, one hand scrabbling for the gun, another looping around his neck. The gun was forced away; suddenly, they were locked in a deadly embrace for control. Rider was stronger than he looked. Julius grunted with effort as he strained to bring the gun around. 

He might end up shooting himself as well but it would be worth it to take out the bastard that had killed his father. Who had ruined _everything_.

An explosion rocked the building - sufficient to knock them off balance but not enough to separate them. Julius let out another snarl, still trying to wrench himself from Rider’s grip.

And then - without warning - the roof in front of them blasted apart, a fiery inferno leaping upwards in a sheet as both of them were tossed into the air, forced apart.

Julius hit something solid and made of glass, which shattered on impact; splintered shards rained down around him. For a second he was dazed, staring at the gaping hole in the middle of the roof. Another few feet and he’d have fallen straight through. 

He took a deep breath and hauled himself upright trying to catch his balance against the broken framing and looked around for Rider. The other boy was scrambling back from near the edge of the roof. He’d been lucky too - another foot and he would have plummeted three storeys to his death. 

Good. Julius wanted to handle it himself anyway.

The gun was gone, but he didn’t care. He charged over. Rider was still off-kilter; at Julius’s heavy kick to his middle, he went down without protest. At once Julius pinned him, wrapping two hands around the soft skin of Rider’s throat.

_Yes._

As if suddenly coming to his senses, Rider’s eyes widened; and then he was striking out, hooking his legs up to try and break Julius’s hold. It was easy to shrug off - Julius had the upper hand, and years of training under Ms Stellenbosch and sparring with his brothers meant Alex _Rider_ didn’t stand a chance. 

He could almost pinpoint the moment Rider realised it. Desperation started to seep in his movements. Deliberate strikes turned frantic and sloppy. Julius drank it in, unable to help a grin even as he panted against Rider’s blows and the effort of keeping him down. Rider would lose his strength soon. He just had to hold on and - 

Pain shot through Julius’s temple and he instinctively released his hold as he grabbed at his head. Rider scrambled out from underneath him and hauled himself onto his feet, trying to get away.

“No!” 

Julius lunged forward, throwing his weight around Rider’s ankle. A soft pop. Rider screamed. Music to Julius’s ears. He drew up to get a better hold, but already Rider was overbalancing backwards as he tried to jerk his weakened leg from Julius’s grasp. 

He was going to fall. 

Julius almost grabbed him back and then stopped himself. As much as he wanted to kill Rider, what better way than to do as his father had always said and let nature take its course? 

He pulled back. There was a long second as Rider fumbled for something to grasp at to save himself. There was nothing. He let out a strangled yell as he arched backwards - 

\- and plummeted off the edge of the building.

Julius waited for the wet smack of body on concrete.

It didn’t come. Instead, there was something like a soft _whump._ Julius stumbled to the edge of the building. Down below, just about visible through the smoke billowing out of the windows, was Alex Rider’s body. He had landed on the shrubbery - that had deprived Julius of the sound of his death - but his eyes were closed and he was still. 

Dead. 

Alex Rider was dead. 

A manic laugh bubbled out of Julius’s mouth. 

Another explosion shook the building. Julius’s laugh was cut abruptly short as he lost his balance. He stepped back to catch it. 

There was the crack and groan of buckling metal. Then the world opened up around Julius’s feet and he was plunging downwards, his mouth open in a silent scream as he sucked in smoke rather than air. 

He hit something solid; and then there was nothing.

* * *

He woke with a pounding head and a dry mouth that tasted of ash.

It took him a moment to open his eyes. When he did he found himself in a hospital room. There was a middle-aged man standing at the foot of his bed in a long white coat with a stethoscope looped around his neck. A pair of silver framed glasses were perched midway down his nose as he examined a clipboard. He glanced over them as Julius shifted, blinking. His head was hurting a lot. His throat felt painfully constricted, like it was stuck together.

“Ah, you’re awake.” The doctor’s tone was brisk; dispassionate. Not like Mr Baxter, who had been ever-anxious when any of Julius or his brothers had come around from surgery, flapping around them like some sort of hen. “How are you feeling?”

 _Like shit._ “Thirsty.” His voice came out as a hoarse croak.

“There’s some water on the table to your right.” 

He didn’t move to help. Julius pushed himself slowly into a half sitting position. His back hurt too; probably bruised. He turned his head and found that the doctor was right: there was a plastic cup filled with water on the bedside table. He tried to lean over and felt something tugging on his left wrist, but managed to grab the cup anyway. He gulped the water desperately, feeling the pain in his throat ease. 

The doctor watched him silently.

Increasingly wary, Julius slowed up his drinking and stopped before he’d finished. Something wasn’t right. He looked down at himself and found that he was, embarrassingly, in some sort of patterned hospital nightgown. Attached to his left index finger was a plastic clip - measuring his vital signs. And around his left wrist - 

\- silver handcuffs. Attached to the metal bar of the bed. 

Julius felt a stir of panic.

“What’s this for?” he demanded, not bothering to sound polite about it. He flapped his left wrist uselessly. The handcuffs made a clanging noise against the bed. _Prison chains._

The doctor smiled thinly. “I don’t make the rules, I’m afraid. But someone should be along to speak to you shortly. In the meantime, you’ve suffered a head injury, so you’ll have to take it easy for a few days. Do you remember your name?”

The dull ache in the back of Julius’s skull suddenly moved to the front. _Danger_ , it seemed to say. 

Yes. It took Julius a second to work it through; to remember. Alex Rider had fallen off the roof. He’d died. And Julius was still alive! 

But now he was a prisoner. Like his brothers. Unless…

Unless he could somehow convince them _he_ was Alex Rider. If they didn’t already know he wasn’t.

The handcuffs didn’t bode well. On the other hand, wasn’t it better to play it safe?

“I’m not sure,” he said. He injected a note of confusion in his voice; he sounded positively _harmless_. “My head still feels fuzzy. I think I need some time.”

“All right.” The doctor made a note of something on the clipboard, and then hooked it onto the end of Julius’s bed. “That’s perfectly normal. I’m going to make a telephone call, but there’s a button to your left if you need to call one of the nurses. All right?”

Julius didn’t say anything. There was something suspicious about this doctor. He probably knew why the handcuffs were there and just didn’t want to say. Maybe he even knew why Julius didn’t want to say his name. Better to treat as an enemy until he had more information. 

He waited until the doctor left. As soon as he was out of the door, Julius pushed off the bedsheet and blanket and scrambled to the end of the bed. It was quite awkward, with his left wrist attached to the bed’s side rail, but he managed to slide the handcuffs down the bar so he could move to the bottom of the bed. The movement made him feel dizzy but he ignored it, instead grabbing the clipboard. Annoyingly, the words swam in front of him; his stomach lurched; for a moment he thought he was going to be sick. But he blinked and somehow the world righted itself again, and he found himself staring at the name at the top of the page.

_Rider, Alex (TBC)_

Rider. They thought he was Rider. Or, at least, that he might be. Good enough for now. He just had to convince them. Maybe he could blame some of the forgetfulness on the head injury. 

He flicked through the rest of the pages, but most of them were filled with words and numbers he didn’t understand, or spiky, illegible handwriting that reminded him of a spider. It made his head hurt again so he fumbled to put the clipboard back and retreated back to the pillows, trying to quash the feeling of nausea and get his thoughts straight. 

Rider had to be dead. Didn’t he? Wouldn’t they have done some DNA testing or something if there had been two of them, to find out which was which? It was the one thing Julius couldn’t get around: he might have been made to look like Rider; he might be able to pretend; but he couldn’t deny the fact that the blood running through his veins was his father’s; that he was a Grief. 

But they couldn’t have tested for that. They’d know. Which meant he was still in with a chance. Definitely less of a chance if Rider was still alive - but he’d fallen three storeys off the side of a roof. He hadn’t been moving. If he had any decency, he’d be dead.

Maybe he should have tried to sort through the mess in his head a bit more - try to come up with a plan - but he closed his eyes instead and fell asleep.

When he opened them, he found that someone was, once again, in the room with him. Not a doctor, though. This one was wearing an ill-fitting pinstriped suit and was carrying a brown mac coat over one arm. He was standing looking out of the window. 

“Who’re you?” Julius asked.

The man turned, revealing greying hair that was thinning on top and a tired face that wore a frown. “You don’t remember?”

His voice was soft, but Julius fought not to flinch. _Fuck_. He’d already cocked up. If he was Alex Rider, he was obviously supposed to know this man - whoever he was. He was going to have to be a lot more careful if he was going to manage this.

“Sorry,” he said, trying to sound apologetic. “I hit my head. They said I might forget things.”

“Yes; I spoke to Dr Rose.”

Dr Rose; that must have been the doctor from before. What a stupid name.

“Do you remember your name?” the man asked. He still sounded kind, but he had a sharp gaze that surveyed Julius keenly.

“It’s Alex,” said Julius. “Alex Rider.”

Something slithered across the man’s face - relief, possibly? “Good. I’m John Crawley. From the Special Operations division of MI6. Does that jog your memory?”

MI6. The British Secret Service. That was the organisation that had sent Rider to Point Blanc. For a moment, Julius felt a sharp flare of anger; a desire to coax the man in front of him - Crawley - close to the bed and then do something very painful to him. Like snapping his neck. But he forced it down. There would be something immediately satisfying about it, of course, but it would undeniably give the game away.

“Yes,” he said instead, his voice bland. “Mr Crawley. Now I remember.”

“Good.” Crawley smiled encouragingly. “Do you remember what happened at the school?”

That was, unfortunately, something Julius really _was_ having trouble remembering. He remembered being on the roof; an audible pop - that had been Rider’s ankle; a fire; and Rider falling. 

Yes; Rider’s sprawled body on the ground below was something he definitely _did_ remember. 

“I turned up for a meeting with the Headmaster,” he said slowly, starting with the bit that was decidedly less confused. “But Mr Bray wasn’t there. It was - him. Julius Grief.”

“Julius?” Crawley sounded interested. It took Julius a second to realise why. MI6 hadn’t even known his name. They’d just known him as one of Grief’s children, or Alex Rider’s twin, or _whatever_ they thought. There was another twist of cold anger in his chest, like a knife. 

“Grief’s son,” he got out through gritted teeth. “The one who looks like Ri - me. You must have missed him when you were rounding them all up.” It felt good, to get a jab in, even if it was small. “He came after me.” Would Rider sound scared? Probably. He’d been scared, on the roof - Julius had seen the burst of fear behind his eyes as Julius’s fingers closed around his throat. “I thought he was going to kill me.” He tried to sound a bit pathetic, but noted Crawley didn’t look very sympathetic. Maybe Rider was supposed to be braver after all.

“And do you remember what happened to him?” Cautious, this time. Julius felt a spike of something - a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

“He - fell,” he said. He didn’t even have to pretend to sound a bit sorry about that; he still sort of wished he’d managed to give Rider the final push over the edge. “He fell over the edge and hit the ground. He...” He drew in a breath, trying to steady himself so he didn’t look too delighted. “He wasn’t moving.”

“Ah. Well.” Crawley paused. He looked regretful. “I’m afraid he died.”

It took Julius a second to absorb this. When he did, there was a whoosh of exhilaration through his ribcage that nearly left him breathless. Rider was _dead_. That slippery little _snake_ was gone, and he, Julius, had avenged his father. He felt a little like laughing. In fact, it was quite a lot of effort not to.

“Can I see the body?” he blurted out. 

Crawley hesitated. Looked a little ill. “The body’s not in a very good way. He fell several storeys. It would be very unpleasant.”

Good. Julius liked the idea of Alex Rider having died a horrible and painful death. “I don’t mind. I want to see. Can I?”

He could hear the excited note in his voice; he hadn’t quite managed to keep himself in check. Crawley gave him a strange look. Had he gone too far? God, it was so difficult to be Rider, with his apparent queasiness for anything fun. But then Crawley simply shook his head.

“I’m afraid it’s already been cremated.” 

Julius felt the smile leave his face abruptly. MI6 hadn’t wasted any time, had they, he thought bitterly. As soon as they could wipe any evidence he’d existed from the Earth, they’d taken it. The thought was chilling, even for him.

And now he wouldn’t get to see Alex Rider’s bruised and battered body. 

“I understand,” Crawley said slowly, “that it would have been comforting to confirm it for yourself. This must feel very personal. He had your face, after all.”

No; Julius had _his_ face. But Crawley didn’t need to know that. He stayed silent. Crawley gave him a long searching look before he cleared his throat. 

“Yes, well,” he said. “We thought at first…” He looked slightly pained. He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Julius felt another savage stab of satisfaction. This was so much easier than he’d imagined. These people were idiots. He reached up his left hand to hide his smile, and that was when he remembered it. The handcuffs.

His stomach gave an unpleasant swoop.

Crawley followed his gaze. “Ah. Yes. Sorry about that. Well, you’ll understand we couldn’t be certain which of you was which. You look identical, after all.”

“Yeah,” said Julius, his mouth dry again, “but I’m Alex. So...you can take them off, can’t you?”

Crawley adjusted his collar. “I don’t have the key, I’m afraid. But I’ll get the security staff to unlock it for you on my way out.”

Julius’s thudding heartbeat seemed to subside, just marginally. It was all right. They didn’t want to keep him prisoner. They believed him after all.

“So - what now?” he asked.

There was a short pause. Crawley’s gaze seemed to be assessing. 

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” he said.

Julius felt a bite of impatience. “Well,” he said, “I completed my - mission for you successfully.” He had to grit his teeth saying it. “What next?” He didn’t know if Rider would have asked, but if he was going to pretend to be him, he had to get some sort of steer on what he was supposed to do - what was supposed to happen now. He felt another stir of trepidation. Would he have to go to Rider’s _school?_ Live with that stupid red-haired girl - the housekeeper? 

Had he really thought this through?

Of course not. He had a head injury, for fuck’s sake. But there really wasn’t much to think through. What was the alternative? Admit that he was really a Grief and get incarcerated with the rest of his siblings? 

“Well, what do you want to happen?” Crawley asked mildly.

Good question. What _did_ he want to happen? He could tell this man - Crawley - that he wanted to be left alone; that he never wanted to see MI6 again. They’d been responsible for the death of his father, after all. For ruining everything.

And yet… the alternative was slotting back into Rider’s ordinary, boring life. What would that achieve, exactly? At least MI6 was part of the British Government. A body with power. If there was one thing Hugo Grief had drilled into his children, it was that power was everything. If Julius could bide his time; ingratiate himself; make himself indispensable somehow… Maybe he could work out a plan for what to do next. Maneuver himself into a position where he might be able to continue his father’s work.

“I….had assumed I would keep working for you,” he said. Off-handedly. Like he didn’t really mind either way.

Crawley’s gaze sharpened with obvious interest, but when he spoke he sounded nearly as cool as Julius. “We’ve never had the impression you enjoyed it.”

“No, I - ” _Fucking_ Alex Rider. Even now, he seemed to be trying to wreck Julius’s plans from beyond the grave. “I wasn’t sure, before. But this experience made me realise...the difference I could make.” It wasn’t even a lie. He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to lay it on too thick, but he also realised now he couldn’t afford for MI6 not to bite because they thought he was uninterested. “I - I want to work for you. As much as possible. I don’t want to go back to school.”

There were several beats of silence. Crawley’s gaze was appraising. For a moment Julius was worried the man could see right through him. But then - 

“All right,” Crawley said. “I’ll discuss it with my superiors, at any rate. We’ll let you know.”

Crawley was making him wait for an answer. Julius resisted the urge to scowl. But something must have shown in his face, because Crawley spoke again.

“Don’t worry; I don’t expect we’ll make you wait too long.” He pulled on his coat; it was slightly big for him. Cheap looking. “I’d best be on my way. I expect I’ll see you again soon. Take care.”

“Thank you, Mr Crawley.” Forced politeness.

“You’re welcome. Rest up, Alex.” And then he stepped out the door, and Julius was left alone.

* * *

The next few days passed by agonisingly slowly.

The more time that passed without Crawley reappearing, the blacker Julius’s mood became. Which was unfortunate, because after the first day - which, after Crawley’s visit, consisted only of sparing and uninteresting visits from clinicians inquiring about headaches and nausea - they sent round the head doctors. Suddenly he was forced to play nice for hours on end, even as they asked pointless and insulting questions like what roses and tulips had in common and whether he could say fifty words beginning with the letter ‘B’ - first while they scribbled incessantly into notepads, and then whilst he was hooked up to all sorts of machines. 

It was because he had a head injury, they told him; they had to do tests to ensure he hadn’t been caused brain damage.

“But I’m _fine_ ,” he said at the beginning of the third day. “My head doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

“Of course,” said that morning’s psychiatrist over her clipboard. She was a thin, serious sort of woman. Julius had been suspicious of her immediately. “We just have to make sure.”

 _We just have to make sure_. That seemed to be the constant refrain. But midway through the third day they stopped asking random questions and turned to things which seemed to be testing his personality more than his brain. At least they were slightly more interesting. The trouble was that he could tell they were designed to trip him up.

“And when the other boy fell off the roof,” said the psychiatrist (it was a different one this time; a man in his thirties with a foreign accent and a goatee), “how did you feel?”

_Ecstatic. Sorry I hadn’t pushed him myself._

Julius was pretty sure that Alex Rider wouldn’t say that. Except he wasn’t sure what the right answer was supposed to _be._ Maybe Rider would’ve been scared - but it wasn’t like he was a stranger to death; he’d killed Julius’s father. 

“I didn’t feel anything,” he settled on. “It all happened so fast.”

“And what about now?”

“What _about_ now?” he bit back. This was the third round of questioning for the day and he was tired. Not in the mood to play games.

“Well.” The psychiatrist didn’t seem perturbed by his outburst. “Any guilt?”

 _Guilt?_ That was the last thing Julius was feeling. “A bit,” he hedged, sensing a steer, and the psychiatrist made a note.

Those were the easier questions. The harder ones bordered on the philosophical. 

“What do you see yourself doing in ten years’ time?”

“Making a difference,” was the answer he tried. It was the one he had given Crawley and he seemed to have bought it. 

“How do you hope to accomplish that?” the psychiatrist pressed.

Dangerous territory. Julius wasn’t even sure he had an answer to it - he’d been turning the question over and over in his mind for the last few days and still had nothing more than the vaguest of senses that the course he’d opted for was better than any of the alternatives. 

“What I’m doing now helps people,” he said. Himself, mostly - but he wouldn’t mention that. 

“Not always,” she corrected. “Sometimes it hurts people too.” Her eyes met his. Like Crawley, she seemed to want to look straight into his brain; read what he was thinking.

He had to do his best not to sneer. “That’s part of getting the job done, then, isn’t it?” A sentiment his father had drilled into them. Not one this woman or MI6 were likely to disagree with, either, if Rider’s treatment of Julius’s father was anything to go by. 

“Sometimes.” She hummed. “Have you had to take a life before?”

Many. A hunt his father had called it - interlopers who had gotten too close to the facility, security who were not performing up to snuff, even outsiders. All unleashed in the woods with a tracker and to the victor went an evening of their father’s time. Alone. Julius had done horrible things to win those games without blinking an eye. Whatever MI6 tasked him with would be nothing like bludgeoning a man to death with his bare hands. 

Or maybe it would. He didn’t care either way. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. He thought he looked rather fetching in red. 

“Alex?” 

He hadn’t answered the doctor’s question, he realised belatedly. But just this once he and Rider had identical answers and he imagined the same emotion behind it. 

“I think we both know the answer to that.” 

A pause. Then she simply nodded and flipped to the next page of the rather sizable binder in her hands to start the next set of questions.

It was nothing short of a relief when Mr. Crawley finally appeared on the fifth day after Julius had woken. The knock at the door made him scowl, but he wiped it off his face the second he realised who it was.

“Sorry. Thought you were someone else coming by to pick my brain.” He couldn’t quite rid the bitterness from his voice.

“Ah. I’m sorry if they were unpleasant.”

It was a strange apology to make. It was the hospital that had insisted on the tests, after all, unless - 

“It was you. You asked them to do the tests.” Julius was angry with himself. He should have realised that they didn’t need to ask how he felt about killing people to check if he had a head injury. But in his defence he’d never been subjected to psychological testing before. 

“Of course.” Crawley came into the room properly. “You said you wanted to work for us full time. It’s not the same as doing the odd assignment for us here and there. We had to be sure you had the right attributes.” His expression didn’t give much away. Nor had he sat down. Julius did his best to swallow the unease that came with that. 

“And?” he asked.

Crawley studied him for a second before he spoke. 

“You’ve been approved.”

“Really? I’m going to work for you full time?”

“Yes.”

A burst of laughter threatened to erupt out of Julius at the confirmation. He’d done it - he’d actually done it! All of those psychiatrists and doctors and all those _hours of questions -_ and he had actually managed to convince them all he was Alex Rider. Those _idiots_. 

Somehow, he forced it down. But he couldn’t help a grin. “Does that I mean get to get out of here?”

“Of course; they’re ready to discharge you. As soon as we’ve completed the paperwork.”

“And where will I be going? Home?” He wasn’t sure if he could stick that housekeeper for any length of time.

But Crawley shook his head. He looked grave. “Julius Grief managed to track you down,” he said, “which means your location is compromised. We’ve got somewhere else safe for you to stay.” He paused delicately. “And there will, of course, be some more we need to go over before we let you loose in the field again.” 

More tests? Julius couldn’t stifle a groan. Crawley smiled thinly. 

“A few practical things to improve your performance. Training, if you like. I rather think you’ll enjoy the challenge.”

He would. Sitting in a hospital bed after _years_ of daily training had him practically ready to claw out of his own skin - or maybe at someone else’s.

“Let’s go then, shall we?” He flung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Crawley seemed to regard him a little warily, but he held out a bag he had been carrying.

“You’ll want some clothes first, I think. I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

Julius had begun stripping off his gown before the door had even shut. He didn’t want to spend a minute longer here than he had to. Not when freedom - true freedom - was at his fingertips; and once he had that then he could start doing his part to realise his father’s dream.

All with the blessing of an intelligence agency. He didn’t bother to suppress the heady giggle at the thought.

* * *

MI6’s training was conducted quickly and ruthlessly over six weeks, in a training centre near Salisbury. 

Fitness tests, first of all - which Julius had no problem with after a childhood in the Alps. Five - sometimes ten - kilometre runs through the snow every other day, skiing and snowboarding and mountain climbing had made MI6’s assault courses a breeze. Hand-to-hand combat training: Julius had that down too after years of daily martial arts training with his brothers. Language lessons were skirted over - a few conversations with a linguist to find out how good his English and French were. He obviously avoided mentioning he spoke Afrikaans. He didn’t know Spanish or Italian so they quickly gave up on that.

Then there was the target practice.

The first time they put a rifle in his hands Julius was tempted to turn around and fire a round of bullets straight into the forehead of his annoying instructor. Especially when he started lecturing him on the different parts of the gun, like Julius had never held a rifle before. All of Hugo Grief’s children had been trained across a range of weapons and Julius had been the best of all his siblings. He took a vicious satisfaction in how impressed the instructor was when the lecture finished and he was finally allowed to shoot at something. “A natural” the instructor called him, and Julius’s lip curled with gratification at the thought that he was better at Alex Rider’s job than Rider himself.

* * *

He had killed Rider at the beginning of May. It was late June before Julius left MI6’s training centre for his first assignment.

They gave him a handler. The closest thing Julius had ever had to a handler was Eva Stellenbosch. This woman was about as far from Eva Stellenbosch as it was possible to be: a small, thin English woman, cold and unfeeling. Veronica, he was supposed to call her, though he mostly thought of her as The Bitch. She wouldn’t let him carry around weapons as a matter of course - he was too young, she said, and it would cause trouble if he was caught; he’d get a gun when he needed it. 

She looked like she could barely carry a rifle herself. He imagined Ms Stellenbosch could have snapped her in two over her knee. It was a pleasant image.

They travelled to Havana together under the guise of mother and son. Julius was given a British passport - and for the first time since he had woken in hospital in London it felt like he had a ticket to freedom - but his handler confiscated that too as soon as they cleared customs, tucking it briskly into her handbag and ushering him towards a taxi. 

His mission was to kill a Russian. Ex-military. He hadn’t been given any more detail than that and he didn’t care to ask. The important thing was that he was finally being let out on his own, and they were giving him a weapon.

Cuba seemed full of Russians, the common ideology easing the way and the weather doing the rest. The town Julius and his handler travelled to was particularly rife with them. It was a quiet place - not the sort of location you might’ve expected a load of military masterminds to settle down. Though it was peak tourist season, little of it reached this town, miles from the beaches where they preferred to flock. Julius would have stuck out like a sore thumb were half the local children not fair-haired and Russian.

Three days he had to hang about town by himself, trying to get a good look at the target. By the third afternoon his brain was numb with boredom and the sound of Veronica whittering in his ear about keeping his head down. Stupid cow. No one had given him a second-glance. He was perfectly capable of blending in in the middle of a town square, full of people sat at square tables in the sun with their beers and hats.

“ _Que sabor?_ ”

A question in Spanish. Julius had barely registered reaching the front of the line. He didn’t understand but he could get the gist, and he eyed the faded stickers of popsicles and colors with disdain. He wasn’t exactly in the mood for ice cream, but then he’d never had it so he didn’t really know what that would feel like. It had been Veronica’s idea - another way to stop him looking suspicious, and she’d nagged him until he’d acquiesced. 

He pointed to one of the deep red ones. Far closer to what he was actually in the mood for. 

The ice cream vendor handed over a long sealed wrapper. Julius carefully tossed a few coins across the countertop, already tearing open the wrapper as he turned away. Behind him, he heard the coins clatter to the floor along with words that sounded a lot like swearing. He smirked, and wandered away. 

It wasn’t bad, he decided as he sucked thoughtfully on the blood red ice. Sharp and sweet and pleasantly cold in the midday sun. But this felt like a waste of time. How was he realising his father’s vision by sucking on an ice lolly in the middle of the Caribbean?

He pushed the thought roughly away. He’d asked himself that question a lot, sitting in MI6’s training centre back in England, but he couldn’t see what else he was supposed to do. He had no idea where his siblings were - he’d asked once and been rebuffed and he knew it’d be suspicious to ask again. All he could do was go through the motions and do what MI6 wanted, and hope an opportunity eventually presented itself where he could somehow resurrect his father’s dream.

It all felt very vague and uncertain. He hated it.

“Alex.”

The Bitch, in his ear again. _Alex_. Every time Julius heard that name he felt like screaming. He resisted the urge to yank out the earpiece and stamp on it.

“What now?”

“Target sighted. Far side of the square. Next to the clock tower.”

Julius whipped around on the spot in his eagerness before he remembered he was supposed to be blending in. But he spotted him. The ex-general. There was no mistaking him. Julius had stared and stared at his photograph in a bid to remember his face - and imagine what it was going to look like when he put a bloody red hole through it.

“Engage?” It was hard not to sound too excited.

“Trail only; no force unless you can get him somewhere quiet,” Veronica returned sternly. Obviously he hadn’t been subtle. 

“Are we waiting for him to die of old age?” he hissed into the mouthpiece as he started moving. He chucked the ice lolly onto the ground as he went. 

“Just follow him,” Veronica said. “Not too close; you don’t want to -” 

Julius tuned her out. They’d agreed on the plan three days ago. A failed robbery. They needed the Russian dead but without any trace back to the intelligence community. A robbery by a street rat would sell it better than anything. Shoot him. Let himself be seen and then get away.

The gun in the back of his waistband was burning a hole into him. His heart rate was already picking up in anticipation. When they’d told him they wanted to use him for “disposals”, he’d thought they meant behind a sniper rifle. That would come, probably, but he was glad this one wasn’t going to be from a distance. A sniper rifle was too impersonal; too sudden; too distant to see the light extinguish behind his victim’s eyes. He would take what he could get but it was so much better to hear gasping breaths and pleas for mercy. That was what he wanted from this. _Power_.

Ahead of him, the target ducked into a side street. Julius had already memorised the entire town; knew this was his chance. He sped up. When he turned onto the side street he found it empty - as he’d expected. The man was setting a brisk pace, and Julius matched it with his own, lengthening his strides. His footsteps were heavy; the man looked around. Stopped when he saw a teenager obviously following him.

“You dropped your wallet!” Julius said. The man frowned, and Julius realised his mistake. He’d said it in English. Not Russian or even Spanish. 

No time to waste. He pulled out the gun and fired.

The first shot was non-lethal and it earned him an agonised scream. Julius pulled the trigger again and the scream was abruptly cut short - burbling blood instead erupting from the man’s wounded throat. Enough to kill him. Julius should leave - get to the nearest crowded place and make sure that everyone saw a blond youth obviously in a hurry to get away.

Instead, he found himself walking up to the man, who had slumped against the alley wall. Squatted down so that they were face to face. The man’s breaths were coming in a shallow wheeze as the air escaped. Julius watched, enraptured, his eyes fixed on the fading light in the man’s pale eyes. Could actually see the moment it went dim, a split second before the man’s head slumped, lifeless, onto his chest. 

Julius felt his lips curve into a smile. He snapped the man’s watch off his wrist - it was supposed to be a mugging, after all - and pocketed it as he stood up. It hadn’t quite been as good as seeing Alex Rider’s limp and lifeless body, but it would do.

“Target terminated,” he said into his earpiece, and hoped he didn’t sound too gleeful about the whole thing.

* * *

On the edge of a watery nuclear dumping ground five and a half thousand miles away, a single shot rang out. There was a heavy thump on the ground, and then silence.

It was only then that Alex Rider opened his eyes, instinctively locating the gun in Sarov’s limp hand and just as quickly looking away, shivering in the cold chill of the Russian wind.


End file.
